Venezuela: Italy Sends Team to Aid Search for Missing Plane

Italy is sending a specialized team to Venezuela to help search for a small plane that disappeared last week off a string of Caribbean islands while carrying four Italian tourists, including Vittorio Missoni, the C.E.O. of the Italian fashion firm that bears his family’s name. Italian officials said that the team — including a naval expert, two fire department search-and-rescue experts and a member of Italy’s national flight safety agency — would leave Wednesday. They also said Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi had praised Venezuela’s “massive effort” in the search operations since the plane disappeared after leaving the resort islands of Los Roques for Caracas on Friday.

A version of this brief appears in print on January 9, 2013, on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Venezuela: Italy Sends Team To Aid Search for Missing Plane. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe